“It was a lovely boom,” Cullen said politely. “But are you quite sure you got all of them?”
“Am I stupid? Do I dance around up here if there are some left? There’s a couple legs sticking up out of the rubble that are still twitching, but you can shoot ‘em as you go by. But, uh…” He stopped jumping. “The pass isn’t exactly stable. More rocks came down than I expected. Maybe we should hurry.”
Good idea. Lily rose, wary still. Cynna joined her. “Lily, I hate to say this, but if the pass is unstable… are we going to be able to get back if we cross it?”
Lily wiped the sweat off her forehead with the back of her hand. They’d been a trifle busy since it grew light enough to see their back trail. Lily wasn’t surprised Cynna hadn’t had a chance to check it out. “Look back,” she said quietly.
“What do you… oh. Oh, hell.”
They’d climbed quite a bit. Rocky slopes spread out behind them. And beyond those slopes—beginning to climb them—were demons. Uncountable numbers of demons. And toward the front of that mass, one very large demon. House-size, maybe… if you lived in a three-story house.
They were too far away for Lily to make out exactly what that one, enormous demon looked like, but she could see enough to be glad she couldn’t see more.
“Holy Mary, Mother of God,” Cynna whispered. “Even if we turned back this second…”
“There’s no going back,” Cullen said grimly as he rejoined them. “They’re already too close to the place we crossed. But the gate’s with Lily. She can open it anywhere.”
“But…” Cynna glanced at Lily and then set her shoulders. “Right. You’ve got the inflatable raft. If there’s ocean on the other side of the gate, we’ll be okay.”
Lily felt sick. “You had the raft,” she said quietly. “That’s what was in the backpack I had you leave behind.”
Cynna’s mouth opened. Closed. She looked ahead, where the dust still hadn’t settled from Max’s grenades. “Well, the annoying little shit just saved our asses, so I guess you made the right decision. But I sure hope you can come up with a Plan B.”
So did Lily. “Come on. Let’s take the annoying little shit’s advice and hurry.” She started walking, going the only direction she could—forward, one step at a time.
THIRTY-THREE
THE widest part of the pass was filled with rabble and body parts. Lily tried not to look. Immediately beyond that it narrowed again and they skidded down a steep slope for about twenty feet. The land leveled abruptly, then, as they rounded a low shoulder of mountain, it opened up.
She stepped out onto a giant-size ledge maybe twelve blocks long and half a block wide. There was grass here, the first she’d seen. Otherwise it was flat, featureless. Beyond it the ground simply ended. Beyond that was the sea.
The ocean didn’t look right, reflecting that ugly sky, but it smelled right. Lily paused, letting the breeze fill some of the empty places inside.
But she couldn’t pause long. Rule was close. Only where—?
Her small troop spread out behind her, looking around as she was. “Where do we go from here?” Cullen asked.
“Maybe one of us should watch the pass,” Cynna said. “Try to hold it.”
“Ha! You volunteering?” Max shook his head. “Better if we get rid of it. Boom!” He rubbed his hands together, grinning.
“No,” Lily said abruptly. “No, we can’t go throwing grenades at the mountain. Rule is…” She started moving, scanning the blocks of stone that cradled the oversize ledge. “He’s there. He’s inside it.”
The others followed. “Inside?” Cynna said dubiously.
“A cave or something.” She was moving faster now, her heart pounding. He was so close, so horribly close. They hadn’t brought earth-moving equipment, she thought, halfway to‘ hysterical. They’d never once contemplated what they’d need to remove a few feet of rock. “But he’s moving.”
“Toward us?”
“No.” That came out quick and frustrated. “That way.” She gestured at the far end of the ledge, where a tumble of rock blocked them. And started running, as if her feet alone could bridge that last distance, carry her to him in spite of the rock between.
“Max,” Cullen said, keeping pace beside her.
“What?” The gnome was huffing slightly as he ran.
“You’re supposed to have an instinctive feel for rock. How do we get in, or get him out?”
“I’m working on it.”
Lily barely heard them. Here, he’s here—
And at the far end of the ledge, a huge, dark wolf stepped out from a crevice in the jumble of stone.
Maybe she cried his name. Maybe she just screamed it in her head. Her feet moved without her telling them to. She was running, stumbling over the rough ground—and then someone stepped out behind Rule.
She stepped out. Wearing a dark blue sarong and her token. Rule’s necklace, the missing necklace.
Lily stopped dead. She reached out one hand—not to touch, but to push the impossible away. She looked into her own eyes from twenty feet away, saw her own face go pale, and heard herself say softly, “My lost parts. All my lost parts. You have them.”
Then her knees buckled.
She didn’t faint. Quite. But the next thing she knew was a rough, wet tongue on her face. “Rule.” She touched his muzzle, his shoulder, ran her hand over his ribs. “Rule.”
“This is beyond weird.”
That was Cynna. Lily turned her head slowly, hoping not to see… but she still stood there, her face blank. A face not exactly like the one Lily had seen in the mirror a million times, because it wasn’t reversed.
“Holy shit.” That was a high, squeaky voice, vaguely familiar. And yet another person—creature—stepped out from that crevice. “There’s two of you!”
A demon. The same small, orange-skinned demon who’d tried to possess her—the one who’d conspired with Harlowe, who’d grabbed her while Harlowe hit her with the staff.
Lily grabbed her weapon on her way back up.
Cynna and Cullen already had theirs aimed. But the other Lily moved fast, too. She stepped in front of the demon. “No! She’s—this is Gan. She won’i hurt you.” She looked at Lily, then at the others, and licked her lips—a nervous gesture Lily had been trying for years to break herself of. “You’d like an explanation.”
Cullen answered for all of them, without lowering his machine gun. “That would be good. Be sure to include what the hell you are.”
“You know her!” Gan piped up. “She’s Lily Yu!” Then, more subdued: “Of course, I guess the other one is, too.”
The second Lily sighed. “This may take a while.”
Lily glanced back at the pass. “Better make it the Reader’s Digest version. We don’t have much time. There’s a war headed this way.”
SHE felt more lost than ever. She’d followed Rule through darkness to find herself—her other self, the one that possessed everything she’d lost. The self who knew Rule in his other form. Knew him as a man.
She tried to keep her story short and coherent, but she was distracted by the sight of her face, her body, sitting on Rule’s other side. That woman wasn’t her. Maybe they’d started out as one person, but they weren’t the same, not anymore.
They were sitting in a rough circle, all of them except the little one—Max—who’d taken a guard position in the rocks where he could watch the pass. At least the others had stopped pointing their guns at her… once Rule insisted. He’d gone up to the man—Cullen—and pawed at the muzzle of his machine gun, growling.
Gan had translated that time with no problem: Put it down, you ass.